Free Software Foundation Turns 25 183
An anonymous reader writes "On this day, 25 years ago, Richard Stallman created the Free Software Foundation. He had been the director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Artificial Intelligence Lab. Tired of seeing software that he and others had written appropriated (without acknowledgment or compensation) by disreputable software companies and then told to pay for software they had written, Stallman took action, creating the foundation. The original license was written by Stallman. Stallman had subsequently written a large number of GNU tools, but the license was his most important contribution."
What about emacs (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Uhm, no! (Score:4, Interesting)
That's what I remember reading here in Chapter 1: For Want of a Printer [oreilly.com].
Stallman had subsequently written a large number of GNU tools, but the license was his most important contribution.
Says the vi user who never wrote a line of code in his life! ;-)
Twenty-five years later... (Score:4, Interesting)
I am running Gnu-Linux on an NSLU2, a DNS-323, and a SheevaPlug. I have a free compiler on these devices.
On another computer, I just downloaded MingW and Lighttpd (source and binary) last night.
I remember when "free software" usually meant crippleware, and there was no way a poor kid eager to write code could get a compiler for free.
Thanks for your vision, RMS. You changed culture and you helped the future.
Re:Happy birthday to you, (Score:4, Interesting)
According to the wikipedia article you linked, Wendy Williams owes $700 to WB when she & her audience sang the song. Meanwhile in Canada WB and other members of the CRIA owe nearly a billion dollars for using songs on "best of" albums without paying the original artists.
"One law for the commoners; one law for the masters."
Re:Director of the AI Lab? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, he is their most famous hacker now, in 2010. The context of the discussion is 1985. At that time, he was not their most famous hacker.
Re:The GPL is the most important.... (Score:3, Interesting)
The GPL is the most beneficial license or legal construction In the history of computing.
RealityMaster above may be right - the limited, non-transferable EULA is terribly important right now; the GPL is a sane[r] alternative. Don't ask me about the "freer" BSD license - I haven't made my mind up about that.
Re:Free Software (Score:1, Interesting)
If it were not for free software the PhotoShop would cost not 999 USD, 9999 USD, IIS would cost about 100 grands, etc.
Don't be absurd. Photoshop 1.0 cost $1000 circa 1990, and it had zero open source competition. It had commercial competition, which it actually undercut in price, because it was marketed more in the prosumer segment than as a pure professionals-only tool.
If Adobe tried to jack the price of Photoshop up to $10K, someone would clone its features in a commercial product and undercut them. Free software is absolutely not necessary to keep commercial software prices under control. Same thing applies to IIS.
We would have to perform computing with permission of high priests by a code resembling liturgies.
Debatably the free software is not as sophisticated as commercial software, but it is straightforward.
Nonsense. Free software has done basically nothing to demystify software for average users. It's funny that you mentioned Photoshop, because its anointed free software competition, "the Gimp", is like a poster child for pointlessly user-hostile free software. Free software fanatics have been blabbing for probably a decade now about the Gimp, and it's still an afterthought. I guarantee you Adobe doesn't see it as realistic competition at all.
How's the printer? (Score:3, Interesting)
Thanks to RMS for all his (often colourful) advocacy. But has it done him any good - has he managed to get access to the driver for his labs Xerox 9700 yet?